John Helps

In this interview he says he uses this

In this interview he says he uses this guitar

In this interview he states that he uses this amp

Mentioned by Maybeshewill bandmate Robin Southby, who uses Helps' JCM 800, in this November 27, 2014 Total Guitar interview.

Robin: “The [Marshall] JCM800 I’ve used for years, which actually belongs to John, but it’s just a great, workhorse amp; you can crank it and it sounds great.”

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

John: "I use a Marshall JVM 410 head which does most of the heavy lifting in terms of tone in my setup so this footswitch is doing most of the work while we're playing."

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There's clean, drive and distortion across these switches and the JVM head lets you set a preset in the head. It has a clean channel, drive channel and two distortion channels. Each of those can be three different stages of gain so it gives you loads of control over the tone on every level of gain.

"I have a reverb set on the fourth switch but I don't really use it to be honest."

Mentioned in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

John: "I use a Marshall JVM 410 head which does most of the heavy lifting in terms of tone in my setup so this footswitch is doing most of the work while we're playing."

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner

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"It has lovely bright lights on the display which is wicked in hazy dark venues!"

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

Electro-Harmonix Slammi Plus Polyphonic Pitch Shifter and Electro Harmonix Pitch Fork

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"These are pitch pedals. The Slammi is used in a couple of songs for whammy-type pitch effects, but not a great deal.

"The Pitch Fork I basically use as substitute for down-tuning the guitar for specific songs. I don't really like to change the tuning for the guitar – most of our stuff is in drop C# but there are a few songs where it needs to go lower so we use the Pitch Fork to get the guitar down an octave and make it all a bit heavier when it needs to be."

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

Electro-Harmonix Slammi Plus Polyphonic Pitch Shifter and Electro Harmonix Pitch Fork

[https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/snhCGPc7ihH9ri2mPs5jJe-970-80.jpg.webp]

"These are pitch pedals. The Slammi is used in a couple of songs for whammy-type pitch effects, but not a great deal.

"The Pitch Fork I basically use as substitute for down-tuning the guitar for specific songs. I don't really like to change the tuning for the guitar – most of our stuff is in drop C# but there are a few songs where it needs to go lower so we use the Pitch Fork to get the guitar down an octave and make it all a bit heavier when it needs to be."

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

Boss DD-500 Delay

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"From there everything else is in an effects loop and we come back to the DD-200 Delay in the amp's effects loop. I basically have one delay setting which I don't really use during songs but use it for tails out of sections and songs to sustain things a bit. It's way more complicated that it needs to be for that.

"But it's nice to have something that's versatile because a lot of these pedals get used in the studio as well as live. So this is kind of a delay workhorse."

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

Walrus Audio Slö Multi Texture Reverb

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"This is my main reverb, though it's perhaps a bit washier than I would like. But it's the reverb that we used on almost all of our new record. Loads of tone were done with this Slö from Walrus Audio. It's really great; pretty versatile and sounds really good."

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

Boss RV-5 Reverb

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"I always have it set to the Modulate reverb mode – we've always described it as the I Like Trains sound, if you know that band their reverb has a very distinctive sound and that is all the RV-5.

"When I'm playing live I choose between [this and the Slö] depending on how I'm feeling in the song. I don't really have a set one I go to. They're relatively similar but the RV-5 has more of the wavy, modulated sound."

Pictured and discussed in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.

JHS Pedals Mute Switch

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"It just switches my sound off completely. We have a few songs where it's just a real abrupt stop and that lets me just do that without worrying about the reverb tails.

Pictured in this February 8, 2023 Music Radar interview.